During a chance encounter with an unusually strong blast of solar wind arriving at Saturn, the international Cassini spacecraft detected particles being accelerated to ultra-high energies, similar to the acceleration that takes place around supernova explosions. Saturn, the second largest planet in our Solar System. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute Shock waves are commonplace in [continue reading]

Multiple arcs are revealed around Betelgeuse, the nearest red supergiant star to Earth, in this new image from ESA’s Herschel space observatory. The star and its arc-shaped shields could collide with an intriguing dusty ‘wall’ in 5000 years. Composite color image of Betelgeuse. North is to the top left, east is to the bottom left, and [continue reading]

Researchers using three different telescopes — NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton in space, and the Parkes radio telescope in Australia — may have found the fastest moving pulsar ever seen. Pulsar IGR J11014-6103 in optical, infrared and X-ray. Credit: NASA The evidence for this potentially record-breaking speed comes, in part, from the [continue reading]

New results from NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) reveal that the bow shock, widely accepted by researchers to precede the heliosphere as it plows through tenuous gas and dust from the galaxy does not exist. Stars travel through the galaxy surrounded by a bubble of charged gas and magnetic fields, rounded at the front [continue reading]